Defending the ‘postwar petroleum order’: The US, Britain and the 1954 Saudi‐Onassis Tanker deal

During the early Cold War, Britain and the US fashioned a set of arrangements described collectively in this article as the ‘postwar petroleum order’, which appropriated Persian Gulf oil to fuel European reconstruction and defence. When Saudi Arabia organized a state oil‐tanker company with Aristotle Onassis in 1954, it challenged the terms of those arrangements. The affair provides a case study in contrasting British and American approaches towards oil diplomacy and Arab nationalism. Whereas London crusaded for an Anglo‐American campaign to abolish the Saudi‐Onassis company, Washington wanted the Arabian‐American Oil Company to accomplish the same objective by providing financial incentives to King Sa'ud's government.